Tonight the third and last presidential debate will be held in a university in N.Y. State. What to expect? A lot of talk about the economy and probably no major changes in the polls.
To read more about this and about McCain's recent policy announcements ( the government would take over troubled mortgages, for instance) meant to prove that he is capable of handling the financial crisis, read this story from NPR.
A quick note now on what's been all over the papers, TV and radio for a couple days.
1. The polls show a strong Obama lead both at the national level and in several crucial battlestates. However, the Democrats and commentators have been wary of these figures because of what has come to be known as the "Bradley effect", i.e. voters tell pollsters they will vote for the black candidate but at the polling station on election day, they have a change of heart. This is what happened to Tom Bradley, running for governor in California in 1982. Recently the Bradley effect seems to be much weaker or to have disappeared altogether. Perhaps there might even be an inversed Bradley effect, as was the case in some of the primaries this year, when more people voted for Barack Obama than the polls had predicted.Have a look at NPR's full story on this.
2. The economic crisis is a boon for the Democrats, since it is obviously difficult for a party to retain power in such circumstances. Moreover Obama has seemed to keep his cool and reason rationally whereas McCain's response has been called "erratic" both by Obama negative ads and by the liberal media.
3. The campaign has become nasty, with agressive negative advertisements. If one trusts the liberal media, it is the Republican candidate that has been resorting to such tactics the most. One example that has attracted much talk is when Senator McCain used the term "that one" to refer to his opponent during the debate when they were together on stage Not only is it rude not to name your opponent in such circumstances, but as you remember from your English grammar classes, "that" implies agressiveness or negativity, whereas "this" would have been more neutral. Of course, many wondered whether this was racially tainted. I don't believe that it was, I think it reflected the hostility McCain was directing at Obama and his disbelief of the fact that he is losing to such a younger and inexperienced candidate!
4. Sarah Palin is still a problem for the one part of the elite of the Republican party ( see David Brook's columns in the NYTimes) but the mainstream Republican media have embraced her for better or for worse and are now aiming all their hatred at Obama: check out the National Review Online. Even Kathryn Jean Lopez has toned down her criticism of Sarah Palin and is no longer asking her to stand down but quite the contrary to step up and start campaigning more efficiently ( at the very end of her article on Team Sarah, an organisation of women mobilizing for the Republican ticket and creating supporting videos).
To follow all this effectively I recommend highly the following weekly podcasts (usually no longer than 15 minutes) :
It's All Politics (NPR)
The Campaign Trail (The New Yorker, this week's edition of the magazine focuses on the campaign and has excellent reporting, fiction and hilarious cartoons)
You can download them from i-tunes or from the media's website.
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